Saddlemire Trail Infrared

 After my hike on the Kip Trail, I had time so I took another walk on part of the Saddlemire Trail which also has a trailhead on Pike Rd. I confess that I have never walked the entire length of this one and this hike was no different. I went as far as the boardwalks then turned around I understand that it goes all the way to the SLU campus. I will have to go back and hike it all some time soon. Once again I only used my IR converted G-11.

Weather station

Bench by the Little River

Milkweed

Boardwalk

Common Buttercup

Fallen Tree

That's it for now. I will try to post more frequently. If you have any questions post them in the comments.

Kip Trail Infrared

 The Kip Trail is a nature trail near Canton, NY That runs between CR27 and the Pike Rd.  You can find directions on the web or on the All Trails app.  I have hiked it before, last fall, and wanted to see what it was like in spring. I decided to take my IR G-11 that I described in the previous post. The trail was muddy and buggy. I used 'Adirondack Herbal Repellant' which is a salve in a tin that is nice for carrying because it doesn't spill like liquid. I got it from ADKfragrancefarm.com.* I should have worn waterproof boots. I didn't go all the way through to CR27 from Pike Rd. where I started.  I turned around at a mud hole that was too big and deep for my footwear.  I did shoot a batch of IR photos though.

I tried photographing wildflowers but all the green and the flowers registered as white in IR so the only ones that 'worked' were like the above where the background was dead leaves and wood.

The trail passes by a horseshoe bend in the Little River. This is a 6 vertical frame panorama of the bend.

The other cool feature along the trail is a series of vernal pools that are dried up later in the summer and fall. They were one of the reasons I wanted to hike it in spring.

False Hellebore (veratrum viride) along the trailside.

Another vernal pool.

And another. This is where I  turned around.

As always, the photos are copyrighted. Enjoy them here but feel free to share the link to this page with anyone you wish.
*Unsolicited endorsement

Eclipse in Infrared - The prelude

 Recently, as in last December, I had an old Canon G-11 converted to Infrared. LifePixel was running a holiday sale that was too good to pass up and I had the G-11 just lying around unused so...  I had paid over $100 to have it repaired and CLAed the year before but ended up not needing it for what I used it for back in the day, Do a search of the blog for G-11 and the G-10 it replaced. It is a good camera albeit out of date. But I'm rambling again. 

The day of the eclipse I wondered what it would look like photographed in IR. I took it out ahead of the time the totality was supposed to happen and took one shot of the sun which showed two bright disks, not one. I assumed (never assume) that the second bright spot was an internal reflection in the lens and decided not to use it. Instead, I used my OMD E-M 5iii with a 150-300mm lens and got pretty much the same shots a bazillion other people got.

Only when  I took the IR camera to a couple of local trails and shot a batch of IR photos then imported them to Lightroom did I realize that the second bright disk, which had been invisible to my eye, was actually the Moon approaching the Sun. DUH! Now I wish I had a time machine to go back and redo the shoot with both cameras. I can only wonder what the totality would have looked like in IR.

Above is my one lonely IR eclipse photo through thin clouds. A photographer friend told me that there will be another total eclipse over Spain in 2026. Maybe I'll have to schedule a trip to Spain.

Red Barn Frenzy

 

One of the photos I have in the LPCA B&W Show is a detail of a building in Saranac Lake. At the opening one of my painter friends expressed surprise. She wasn't aware that I photographed architecture. The natural landscape is my primary subject matter but I am fond of old buildings, especially barns and they are fairly frequent subjects in my work.

There is a barn in Hannawa Falls that was sold in 2023 and I wish that I had had the resources to buy it. It would make a fabulous studio and gallery. I don't know what the new owner has planned for it but I wanted to photograph it before any changes are made or (God forbid) it is torn down and replaced with a tract house like those built around it. This morning I went by it on the way to town and decided today was the day. 

I shot over 20 views and as I look at them in the computer I think I may have to go back for more. The ones here are in the order I shot them as I walked around the barn on the highway onto the street and back to my car. All were shot from the roadway (no trespassing involved). This is a barn that, aesthetically speaking, just keeps on giving. I hope you like them as much as I do. If you click on a photo you can see it bigger.

All photos here are copyrighted. Please respect my rights to my work. If you wish to share them, Share the link to this page.

InfraRed Adventures

 Over the holidays I had one of my old digital cameras converted to infrared. I had been meaning to do that for about a year but wasn't sure which camera to convert. LifePixel offered a holiday special of $60 off and that prodded me to decide. I chose to convert my Canon G-11  which I had repaired the previous year but still wasn't using despite it having been my favorite hiking camera back in the day. There are several options for conversion depending on the color spectrum you want to capture. I went for the basic B&W conversion.

When I got the camera back the note suggested settings to get the best results but I shoot RAW, then adjust the images later so I went with my usual settings of RAW capture, Auto ISO, and Aperture priority.  It seems to work fine. Framing images with it is a bit odd because the image on the screen is shades of pink & red., plus the screen is only about 2¼" wide by 1¼" high. It's enough to give me a reasonable idea of the composition.

I could use the optical rangefinder but I've never liked the finder on that camera in part because I have to remove my glasses to use it. The above image is a copy of the RAW file sized to approximate what the screen shows me.

I import all my photos using LightRoom Classic and after some experimentation, I have decided that the first step (after converting to B&W) is to use the Tone Curve to adjust the basic values. One of the differences between film and digital is that film records light on a curve. The silver salts have to receive a certain exposure to light before they start to react. Consequently the 'characteristic curve' rises from the baseline left to right slowly at first, then steadily upward until the salts are affected as much as they can be, then the curve flattens again. The result, if your exposure is correct, is that you end up with a shallow 'S' curve that gives you detail in both the shadows and the highlights. Digital images are recorded on a straight line which results in a relatively flat image. The default 'curve was a straight line from the bottom left corner to the top right corner.  If you shoot in JPG mode you won't notice that because the camera's algorithm applies a curve that the camera's engineers determined to be good for most photos. The problem with that for serious photographers is that in-camera conversion to JPG 'throws away' data that could be used to convert an image to your taste. A long way of explaining why Tone Curves is my first adjustment. As you can see below, I created a custom curve profile for the image above...

The result of conversion to B&W in the Basic panel of LR plus the curve is seen below.

That photo didn't really require anything else because the tonal distribution is pretty even throughout but some photos I made later required additional adjustment using LR's other tools. I shot several (8-10) photos on Norman Ridge which feature a relatively dark barn in a field of snow that is brighter than the cloudy sky. I wanted the tracks that the tractor made the snow (and were hard to see on the camera screen). I also wanted a greater tonal gradation in both than the flat curve of the RAW image. A Tone Curves adjustment similar to the one above took care of the foreground but the sky was still too flat so I applied a mask to the sky and increased the definition with a combination of Dehaze/Clarity then I reduced the Texture in the sky to reduce noise. I also did a small amount of sharpening on the barn and tree.  The two photos below are my favorites of the barn as of today. I might change my mind another day after playing with the series in LR more.

This is kind of a geeky post but I wanted to talk about what I had done and how I got there. If you have questions, please ask.

Usual disclaimer: The photos are copyrighted. Please respect that. The discount on the camera conversion was open to everyone and LifePixel did not ask for a review or give me any special consideration for writing this. They don't even know I'm writing it. I was pleased with their service and recommend them but there are others out there doing conversions and I am not in a position to make any comparisons.

Pro-crastination

 

The title is hyphenated because I am a *PRO* at crastination. It has been months since I have posted here. I have been thinking of posting but what finally inspired this was that procrastination seems to be a theme today. A couple of the comics I follow were about procrastination then a post by Kirk Tuck in my Feedly blog collection chimed in apparently in response to one that Michael Johnston had posted that I read belatedly after reading Kirk's. I then procrastinated by posting some photos on Facebook and doing the daily exercises that I seem to manage only occasionally. Finally, I came back to the computer only to be confronted by a "Peanuts" series on the subject so I guess the universe is telling me to get my self discipline act together.

It goes even deeper though. I have been asked to be on a panel about what it requires to be a successful photographer and they are talking about success in the business sense. In two words, 'I'm not'. I was a successful photographer in the army where that was my MOS (military occupational specialty). In just three years I rose to the rank of E-5 and was in charge of a lab. I have been a successful art photographer in the sense that I have had work accepted into exhibits and even a handful of one-man shows. I have been a success at creating high-quality images, a point of pride for me.  I like doing things well. Aside from the army however I have never 'made my living' exclusively from photography and I spend more on supplies every year than my print sales earn.

There are several reasons for that, procrastination being one. To be economically successful one has to spend way more time on marketing than any other aspect of the creative process. As much as 90% of your time by some estimates. I have an intense dislike for marketing and it takes very little at all to divert me from it. I make sporadic efforts at it like updating my portfolio on Zenfolio (something else I haven't done in many months), making new notecards and prints to take to galleries (I have made new cards but haven't delivered them), and contacting prospective new galleries.

Aside from Kirk Tuck all the pros I am remotely acquainted with make the bulk of their income from publishing, Brooks Jensen - Lenswork magazine, Guy Tal - writing and running workshops, Chris Dodds - running workshops, or by doing things like shooting weddings/family gatherings/events. In small-town America, local photo studios are pretty much dead. With the surfeit of cameras including those in phones, there is very little market for formal portraits. I have dabbled in doing some of those things and didn't like doing them. At this point, I am old, retired and only want to do what I enjoy.

The bottom line is that I have redefined my success in photography as making enough from it so that I can keep doing it and still pay all the other bills because, in the end, I do it because I love doing it. I would be happy to sell you a print though if you see an image here or on FB or Zenfolio that you really want to hang on your wall. If you'd like to help keep me doing it, contact me about buying a print or some notecards. Or you can go to my Fine Art America site if you want a commercially printed copy. They will even print them on all sorts of 'merch' as the YouTubers call it, shower curtains, shopping bags, phone cases, you name it. I'll put the links down below.

To purchase a print (or a whole bunch of prints) go to:
https://jimbullard.zenfolio.com/

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/james-bullard

or send me a message detailing what you want, image, size, etc. The ones you get from me are archivally printed by me and (other than notecards) are signed. I will reply with my current prices.

Have a great day.

Exploring the Clarksboro Trail

 The Clarksboro Trail on Tooley Pond Rd. is named for a small community that existed around there in the 1800s. I have looked in my St. Lawrence County histories (Hough & the 3-volume Landon set) but find no reference to it consequently I don't know much detail about when it existed or how large it was. I have been told that it was an iron mining operation. The photo above is the start of the trail on the Tooley Pond Rd which runs from DeGrasse, NY to the vicinity of Cranberry Lake.

The trail follows a rough and rain-rutted old logging road up a fairly steep incline. The photo below looks down that road. It is not a promising start to the hike.

At the top of the incline is a clearing that served as a staging area for the loggers and if you look to the right there is a blue disk trail marker on one of the trees. After going through a copse of trees you come into a blackberry patch which is a bit confusing due to a web of herd paths created by berry pickers. It is even more confusing coming back out. I ended up bushwhacking back to the clearing on the way out. I was probably paying too much attention to the abundant blackberries and not enough to trail finding.

After re-entering the woods it isn't far to "the wall", a 70' high rock face. This is a 3 frame stitch panorama that really doesn't do it justice IMO but I didn't have anyone with me to provide scale. 

I shot a horizontal panorama which makes it look curved. It isn't. It is relatively straight.

In a large crevice high up on the right was a twig nest, perhaps for a Peregrine Falcon?

It did not appear to be occupied. The trail turns left along the base of the rock face and follows the contour of the land around and upward.

There is some impressive stonework on this section, the stairs in the photo below, and 2-3 shorter ones above it.

Beyond that and near the top was a lovely stretch of woods with ferns. The trail turns sharply right in the ferns and from there, it is fairly level to the two overlooks at the end of the trail, the first being a right turn that takes you past a glacial erratic and the other straight ahead.

Past the boulder is the viewpoint. It is a nice view at any time of year but I suspect a spectacular one in autumn.

The second overlook is to the left and can be reached by a herd path but it requires going down a fairly steep rock face which might not be a good choice if it is wet. In any case, it is only a short hop back to the trail and then to the right. The view is similar. I forget which one I found this small birch on.

As with any trail, you see different things going back down.

This thistle was in the middle of the logging road.

My AllTrails app failed to record the stats for the hike. The trail is not on AllTrails and the app insisted that I had gone to Sinclair Falls which is on the other side of the road. It is a fairly short hike that is not difficult. The rock face alone is worth the hike. The steepest bit is the old logging road at the start. I will be doing it again and I may make a video of it. Enjoy.

All the photos were made with an Olympus OMD E-M5 III and a 14-150 mm lens. All processing including panorama stitching was done in Adobe Lightroom Classic.